Scientists speed coral growth

From 3reef Ocean news:

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/12177335.htm

Interesting quote:

Umm. Yeah only a few.. on this site.

Not sure what to make of the 'concentrated' salt water either. What do you think?

 

well at least they r trying to...uh...well they rnt trying to stop over fishing or the destruction of the reefs...but at least they r doing somthing lol...:/

 

At least it's some type of progress. Without experimentation one will never know.

 

A bit further on in the article he says that concentrated is just a little bit higher than normal salinity. He is also talking about raising coral from sporn, which I am sure nobody on this site is doing

John

 

I'm from St. Louis and I gotta tell you, I have doubts simply because I've been to that aquarium and it's not exactly impressive. It's just a part of the City Museum. http://www.worldaquarium.net/

I also have doubts just thinking about it. Corals are osmoconformers and not osmoregulators. Since a grown coral cell is an osmoconformer and those cells were grown from a stem cell, doesn't it make sense that the stem cell would also behave as an osmoconformer?

Here's another thing that's really bugging me. This is being taken as fact and there are 13 pages of Googles of other organizations who just took and, without thinking critically, republished this story as fact.
13 pages of Google on this story

BTW...this company does exist but it was organized for fish farming and not for coral propogation.

http://www.sos.mo.gov/imaging/10751531.pdf

 

It sounds like a neat experiment, and it may have benefits to our hobby. I question the viability of restocking a natural reef though. If the cause of the destruction of the original reef track was over harvesting, a ship grounding, something like that, propogated coral could be a good idea. However, if the cause of the reefs demise is something else, something unidentified/not pin pointed, I am not sure this will do much good. Many times the cause of reef destruction can not be identified 100%. People theorize its due to an increase in temperature, an influx of nutrients/chemicals/toxins, etc. If those problems are not identified and corrected you will just be repopulating for a short amount of time as these same factors will likely destroy the propogated corals. Of course if you know the cause of the original problems, one could always (hold on let me get my can opener for this can of worms) investigate genetically altering the corals to be more tolerant of the new, less then ideal conditions.